SpaceX's audacious plan to land part of a rocket in the ocean after launching it to space may not have gone perfectly, but the private spaceflight company's founder still considers it a success, one that could help lead to reusable rockets in the future.

Skywatchers across parts of the United States and southern Canada will get an opportunity to watch as the private spaceflight company SpaceX's Dragon capsule "chases" the International Space Station across the sky.

One of NASA's most historic launch pads is now under new management. Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is now under the control of SpaceX, the company led by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.
Primary Section: spaceflight

The company's unmanned Dragon spacecraft was scheduled to blast off today at 4:58 p.m. EDT from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. But the attempt was scrubbed because Dragon's ride to space, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, sprung a leak.

The Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon capsule bound for the Space Station, was lifted into its vertical position at its Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch pad. Read more about re-usable tech: http://goo.gl/QUc4zC

The space tourism company is looking to thank Shihan Musafer, who in 1988 called into a BBC TV show and asked Richard Branson "Have you ever thought about going into space?", inspiring him to register the name Virgin Galactic.

A former Navy test pilot, Binnie had most recently worked for Scaled Composites, overseeing flight tests of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo. He will now help another suborbital space plane, XCOR's Lynx, get off the ground.

From a billionaire to a respected science journal, everyone is getting in on the ridiculous April Fools' Day fun. A few of the more elaborate jokes flying around the internet today (April 1) involve spaceflight and astrophysics.

The four private companies NASA is counting on to develop manned spaceships — Boeing, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) and SpaceX — are notching the many milestones set by the space agency's commercial crew program (CCP), officials said.

From space tourism to mining asteroids, space exploration has entered the commercial era. Tonight, aerospace industry leaders and space historians will gather at the American Museum of Natural History for a live debate about "selling space."

SpaceX fired up the nine-engine first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket Saturday in a major preflight rehearsal before the March 16 launch of nearly 5,000 pounds of experiments and supplies to the International Space Station.

A new study indicates that the entry, descent and landing of SpaceX's unmanned Dragon capsule at Mars is viable. Moreover, the capsule's descent technique would help set the stage for future human missions to the Red Planet.

The Winklevoss twins launched into the headlines Wednesday (March 5) by announcing their plan to ride a Virgin Galactic space plane (and paying with Bitcoins, no less), but they aren't the first set of identical twins to fly in space.

The private spaceflight company will be ready to compete for Air Force contracts using its new Falcon rocket soon, Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX said today (March 5) during a U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense hearing.

Europe’s biggest aerospace manufacturer, Airbus Group, will drop its scale-model Spaceplane from an altitude of 10,000 feet over Singapore in May. If that trial goes well, another unpowered drop from 100,000 feet could follow next year.

SpaceX moved a step closer to being allowed to bid for U.S. national security launch contracts with the Air Force announcing that the Sept. 29 debut of the company’s Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket will count as the first of three required successes.

Putting landing gear on the Falcon 9 rocket, which is slated to blast off on March 16, marks another step in SpaceX's quest to develop a fully reusable launch system. But current plans don't call for the Falcon 9 to actually touch down on the legs.

Russia is preparing for the debut flight of a launch vehicle called Angara, its first new big rocket since the Soviet era. Angara is built around common core boosters that burn environmentally friendly fuels (like SpaceX’s Falcon rockets).